


Punch Out

by Somnum



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M, mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somnum/pseuds/Somnum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fight club shouldn't have to be the stabilizer in a relationship. Dirk doesn't know when it became that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Punch Out

**Author's Note:**

> Credit to fight club rules and all things recognizable from Fight Club go to Chuck Palahniuk.

“I want you to punch me,” Jake says, flopping down on the couch next to you. You turn a page in your book, formulating how exactly you’re going to respond to this. Ever since you’d met Jake he’d been full of odd statements and requests. This probably has something to do with him being homeschooled, you’ve decided. But now that you share an apartment, the frequency of oddities has gone up. Perhaps that makes them normalities, mathematically speaking. He shifts to look at you. “Come on, right in the gut!”

“Does this have anything to do with the movie we watched last night?” He glances away briefly, and you know you’ve hit the nail on the head. “We’re not starting a fight club, Jake.”

“The first rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club.” The words are stubborn and he juts his chin out slightly. 

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“The second rule of fight club is that you don’t talk about fight club.”

“Jake, we’re not starting a fight club.”

“The third rule of fight club is two men per fight.”

“I’m going to finish this book now. You can quote all day.”

“The fourth rule is one fight at a time.”

“I’m ignoring you now.”

“The fifth rule of fight club is no shoes, no shirts in the fight.” 

You don’t respond. 

“The sixth rule of fight club is- ” 

You punch him.

It lands a little crooked, with both of you sitting on the couch and all. But your fist connects to his side with little fuss, and he breaks out smiling. 

He swings his fist and slams it into your jaw.

Your head hurts and your jaw feels all out of place. You feel alive. Getting up from the couch, you shove the table out of the way and gesture to Jake. He gets up too, only to be pushed away by your kick. He’s holding his stomach now and you think your jaw might be dislocated, but you can’t stop now. 

It ends with a blur and blood and curses flying. Jake’s on top of you, his eye blackened, and you know your jaw is dislocated. His pupils are blown, adrenaline off the charts. The last time you got in a fight was forever and never ago, and suddenly you realize that this is addictive. You can feel your breath coming in gasps, can feel Jake’s doing the same, and your heart is going faster than greased lightning. He adjusts himself, hands framing your head.

“We’re starting a fight club.” He knows he’s getting his way, the little shit. The crinkles by the corners of his eyes, the two teeth peeking out from his lips; the signs are as familiar as his accent. Picking up his hand, he wipes blood away from your split lip. 

Closing your eyes briefly, you nod. “We’re starting a fight club.”

Neither of you know how to start a fight club, but it turns out that’s okay. Though rules one and two clearly instruct you not to tell anyone, how the hell is anyone going to show up if they don’t know about it? A word or two here and there, a comment on a bruise, and soon there are four of you at your apartment. At first you weren’t sure if girls were strictly allowed into fight club. After all, there were none in the movie. But the rules didn’t specify and damn, Roxy can throw a nasty right uppercut. 

Roxy takes on you first, and you both come out worth for the wear. Her ring tore a cut into your eyebrow, and you didn’t quite know how much face wounds tend to bleed. She and Jane were a tad uncomfortable following the no shirts rule at first, but after a quick conference with plenty of glances at Jake and you, they both strip from the waist up. Both wear white undershirts and you don’t care enough to make them take those off. 

Jane and Jake are next, and Jake hands you his glasses. Following suit, Jane hands hers to Roxy. The fist fight is quick and before you can properly adjust, Jane has Jake in a sleeper hold. Roxy is clenching her hands, and you feel yourself lean in to watch. Tapping out, Jake stands up and massages his neck. Hurrying over, Roxy looks Jane over and talks to her excitedly, hands moving. Jake makes his way to you and smiles wryly. 

“Do you still want to continue with fight club?” You tease. He shoves you gently before leaning against you, eyes wide and clutching his hip. 

You lower your sunglasses, trying to convey your concern and he nods. “Are you sure you can keep up, old boy?” Rolling your eyes, you grin slightly. Yeah, he’s fine. 

Roxy and Jane exit grinning and waving, with promises spilling around them. They’ll be back next week, maybe with some others in tow. This is actually happening. Jake and you made it happen. Sitting on the couch with Jake, you pull him into a cheerful headlock, letting go when he can’t get out. Clearly he needs to work on that. You should probably think about actually trying to block punches. It might help some. You’ve got time to do that. You’ve got weeks, you’ve got until your body gives up, until you’ve broken several of your fingers and toes, until you can’t get out of bed one day. 

It takes only a few weeks before your apartment has a small crowd of eight regulars. You’ve all had your intro fights, and have moved on to cycling through each other. There’s a notebook under your bed, pages filled with notes on fighting styles. Rose, with her elegant and quick barrage of fists, John, with his heavy and effective downwards elbows, Dave, with his deft dodges, Jade, with her fighting style somehow both animalistic and controlled, Jane, with her deadly grips, Roxy and her whirlwind of kicks, and Jake and his determined stamina. There are pages on matchups. There are pages with quick illustrations. It’s what you do on nights when fight club doesn’t happen, on the nights where Jake is asleep, his hair askew and eyes shut tight, when you can’t sleep. 

The one thing you’re careful with his your hands. You don’t care about the black eye or the bleeding gums or the crick in your leg that won’t go away. But your hands are your livelihood. So you block with your forearms and try to avoid punching people in the face. It happens. Fucks up your fingers more than it did Jade’s face, and she grins at you, kicking quick, before Jake calls the match to a stop. He pulls you aside and you try to brush him off. 

“Jake, I’m fine. You can’t just end a fight like that.” It was his fight club really, his baby. He opened every night; his arms spread wide open in the center of your floor. You wonder if he thinks he’s Tyler Durden. 

He takes your hand in his, and looks it over. Not like he has a degree in medicine or anything. Jane would be more of a help. At least she’s pre-med. “I can for you, moron. Your hand going to be okay?”

You curl your fingers up, wincing slightly. “I’ll live.” 

You’ll live as long as you can still create and as long as you don’t break your fingers enough to make them swell you can still create. Jake rolls his eyes, green flashing up to look at the ceiling, enveloping you in a quick one armed hug before heading back to the general circle of people. You look at your hand yourself, wiggling each finger. It’ll be fine. 

Sometimes when you sit down at your workbench and breathe out, your ribs twanging, you wonder why the hell you’re doing this. You swear you can feel your blood pounding all the time and your body aches. There are days when you don’t move at all. There are stiches in your eyebrow, skewing it at a grotesque angle. Then Dave’s face flashes to you. You can swear he’s the little brother you never had and you met him by seeing Roxy kick him in the ribs repeatedly. Jane and Roxy and Dave and Rose and Jade and John. They’re your friends. Jane comes over and makes breakfast sometimes. Yes, Rose has broken Jade’s arm. Yes, John’s nose is now slightly crooked. But you wouldn’t trade them for any idiots you’d called friends in the past. 

And then you remember Jake on top of you, blood smeared on his face. You feel fucking alive and you can tell he does too, and maybe that makes the pair of you a little bit masochistic. 

You wouldn’t trade it for goddamn anything. 

There’s some shitty movie playing, some classic Jake insists on watching every once and a while. You’re not paying attention, but neither is he. The police came to talk to you today, citing disorderly conduct and complaints from neighbors. The two men took one look at you and raised their eyebrows. Today had been one of those days when the headache from a roundhouse elbow to the head is pounding so you didn’t bother with your shades. You work alone anyways. The shock of opening the door to a guy with orange eyes, a stitched up eyebrow, and a bruise blossoming around his neck must have been quite large, you decided. Your raspy, I-was-in-a-choke-hold-for-five-minutes voice doesn’t help. 

They talk to you for a bit, and you think you manage to leave them with the impression that you and Jake are just a little odd. But it’s a wakeup call. 

This isn’t normal. 

People don’t just do this. If they did, there wouldn’t have been police at your door. You feel weird for the rest of the day. There’s something in the pit of your stomach, rising to fill your rib cage. It’s thick and choking, heavy and dense. Jake doesn’t say much to you, but you don’t say much to him. You don’t really want to touch him. You don’t really want to see him. 

The next fight club doesn’t start with Jake in the middle, doesn’t begin with a sense of excitement and anticipation. At least not from you. You can tell in the tense, tight smiles of everyone else that they came here to fight. They came here to punch someone over their week, over their father that never calls, over their mother that was never there, over how nothing they know is the same. You stand in the middle of the circle, Jake’s eyes trained on you. You don’t like this. 

You watch as faces fall as you begin to talk. Dave looks confused, then angry as you tell them all they need to go, need to get out, the fight club is over. The talking grows when you silence yourself. The questions are everywhere and you try to explain that this is madness, this is crazy. No one lives like this unless they have to, bruises everywhere, aching bodies. But they want this to stay as badly as you did those days ago. They need to fight something, need to fight someone, lest they turn against themselves again. 

Rose once stayed after, sitting in your small kitchen while Jake washed the blood from himself. She showed you her fingertips, each laced in small dots, covered by pinpricks. She tells you of how she used to purposely stick her needles into her fingers when sewing, and then she stopped sewing entirely, content to draw pictures in blood on her hands. She hasn’t lately, she told you. She hasn’t needed to. On the days and the nights when she hates herself, hates everything, she doesn’t reach for a needle. She waits and waits for fight club, and slowly she doesn’t need that anymore, she said, voice soft. She doesn’t hate herself. Sometimes she hates what she does but she can move on, she can cleanse herself of her imagined sins without needles. 

And now it’s gone. You need it, you all do, but you can’t have it. With a frown etched on your face, you wave everyone out. You know they’ll be okay. They’ll start a new fight club if they have to. But you won’t be there. Something’s changed, and you can’t tell what. 

You lie on your bed after, feeling complacent. Your ceiling is still blue. The paint is peeling in the corner. The bed dips under Jake’s weight as he sits next to you. Neither of you say a word, but he lays a hand on your arm and you turn to him. He tries for understanding, but his eyes ring with questions. You shrug off his arm and turn away. 

Jake won’t talk to you for a few days. All you do in response is yell, yell about how childish he is, yell about how you couldn’t do it anymore, yell about how you’re both fucking freaks, yell about how maybe he should move out if that was all that was keeping him around. He snaps at the last one, yells back that it was both of yours, yours together, and that you didn’t really have any power to make any decisions. You were together in it. You were punched together; you helped reset John’s nose together, cleaned blood off the floor together. 

He rubs a hand over his forehead and leaves a streak of dish soap. He doesn’t know what to say, he says. He thinks maybe you should take a break. He needs to think about it. He says he needs time away from you and that’s what matters. He thinks he should move out for a while, visit some people. You can’t bring yourself to argue, can barely bring yourself to lower your voice from a shout. You tell him to go, to maybe call you. It’d be nice to know if this was permanent or not. 

You tell him you’ll miss him.

He dries his hands and comes to lean against you. He tells you he’ll miss you too, his voice crackly. But he doesn’t know this new version of you, needs a few days away. But he’ll be back, he promises. 

The apartment is strange without Jake, strange without fight club. A few old members drop by, none with hate in their eyes, and you don’t miss fight club. They’re still here, you’re still here. Jake’s not here. He’s taken his shaving supplies, an old suitcase, some books, some clothes. Not everything. It gives you hope. You don’t cry. You almost never do. But you think you love him. 

It’s a Monday when he shows up at your door. His smile tells you he wants to stay. You let him in.


End file.
